One of the most influential voices in contemporary cultural theory on how to make it new

As ideas move from one context to another, something new is created. This continuous shifting of the line that separates the valuable from the worthless, culture from profanity, is at the centre of Boris Groys's investigation.

Reviews

“On the New does more to explain the ways that art becomes art in the contemporary world than any book in recent memory. Page after page, Groys formulates ingenious constructions that describe the unique characteristics of the cultural artifacts of our time, while simultaneously compelling the reader to think in a distinctly artistic way about these artifacts. In a very real sense this narrative manages to produce the 'newness' that it so
vividly describes.”

– Matthew Jesse Jackson, University of Chicago

“What the new is not, and other lessons on the cultural economy of revalorization from the master of Slavic nihilism. Postmodernism came and went, but Groys’s diagnoses have outlived it.”

– Peter Osborne, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University

“A paradoxical thinker whose contributions to the philosophy of art can’t be overstated.”

“With his characteristic delight in paradox and defamiliarization, Groys detonates a series of mind-bombs concerning the sacred and profane (what counts as culture?), tradition and rupture (how does culture enter the archive?) and the intimate connection between fashion and history.”

– Claire Bishop, CUNY Graduate Center, author of Artificial Hells

“A brilliant invitation to engage in intellectual experimentation, a theory of the arts as energized by the media — conceived from the perspective of a permanent transgression of the borderlines between the sacred and the profane.”

– Siegfried Zielinski, Berlin University of the Arts

“A new theory about the New, an indispensable work to understanding the modern age.”

– Peter Weibel, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe

“One of the most astute commentators on the art scene today.”

– New Left Review

“Groys combines revelatory analysis with philosophical questions that go to the heart of cultural production today.”